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Medication errors essay
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Tolicia, I agree that getting patients involved in all aspects of their care would greatly reduce the number of medication errors. If a patient knows what their medication looks like, what time they take it, what route it is administered, and what it is for, then this will protect them from receiving the wrong medication. Encouraging patients to get involved in their care would also present more opportunities for patient education and it would allow the patient to ask any questions they may have about their condition, and to mention any side effects or new problems they are experiencing. Urging patients to speak up about their medication administration could also allow the doctors and nurses extra opportunitites to evaluate if the medication
The purpose of the eICU is to: - Accurately monitor and enhance care delivery to the ICU patients remotely - Reduce the time from when the problem is identified till some action is taken over it - Help bring better results, reduction in costs and smaller stays - 10 percent of inpatient beds nationwide are allocated to ICUs, the percentage is higher in tertiary-care centers. - The highest acuity is for the ICU patients. The mortality rate of the ICU patients exceeds 10 percent, and their daily costs are four times higher as compared to those of other inpatients. - They experience more incidents of medical errors (1.7 per patient per day), and because of their inherent instability, they have greater chance to get harmed from suboptimal care.
Preventable medical mistakes cause approximately 200,000 deaths around the United States each year. (1) More than 1,000,000 Americans are negatively impacted by medication errors each year caused by inadvertent mistakes in the prescription filling process. With 4 out of 5 adults taking at least 1 medication daily and 1 out of 4 adults taking 5 or more medications daily nationwide, errors like these cost healthcare industry billions of dollars per year. Health information technology were developed to transform healthcare services, the way they are provided and compensated. Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) becomes an internal part of that transformation process, which can be confirmed from annual Surescripts’ National Progress Report.
Reporting medication errors is beneficial to improve the learning process for nurses. The factors of workload, ineffective communication, and distraction all contribute to medication errors (Sears et al., 2013). Nurses often excuse the behavior of colleagues when a medication error occurs, or nurses will pass the buck to a senior nurse to report the medication error (Haw, Stubbs and Dickens, 2014). Implementing a no blame policy for reporting medication errors, and providing nurses with the knowledge and training to report medication errors will result in an increase of medication errors reported. References Haw, C., Stubbs, J. and Dickens, G. (2014).
Medication errors can be very dangerous for the ones taking the wrong medicines or doses; therefore, safety measures must be in place. Administering them must be done with an understanding and focus. One missed check could have a staff member giving a resident the wrong set of pills. Some interventions to help prevent the medication error from occurring is to first report errors. When errors are reported, the main cause is to try and never let the error occur again.
Our solution to medication errors is here, it is just a matter of implementing it into our
Main Question Post: Discussion 1 The Effect of “To Err Is Human in Nursing Patients rely on health care professionals and institutional organizations for their safety, quality, and well-beings. Nurses are the frontline at the patient bedside, supporting the physician diagnosis and carry out arrays of medical orders for our patients. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report in 1999 titled: “To Err is Human” that revealed a significant amount of medical errors made in healthcare industries mutually conveyed and otherwise (Wakefield, 2008). Medical errors are projected to trigger more demise yearly than all other debilitating ailments combined.
Effective communication is crucial in ensuring that patient care is coordinated and safe. This semester, I witnessed an incident where a patient's medication was missed because the communication between the physician and the nurse was unclear. The nurse assumed that the physician had ordered the medication, but the physician thought the nurse had already given it. This resulted in the patient not receiving the medication on time, which could have led to complications. This experience reinforced the importance of clear and effective communication among healthcare
Medication Errors in Healthcare The nursing profession entails many responsibilities that range from providing emotional support to administering medications that could result in death for those receiving care. Approximately 40% of a nurse's day consists of passing medication, a duty that sets their level of liability above many other healthcare professions (McCuistion, Vuljoin-DiMaggio, Winton, Yeager, & Kee, 2018). Despite today's advances in technology and nursing education, the frequency of medication errors is still staggering. To ensure that the benefits of nursing outweigh the risks, nurses look to the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) six core competencies for guidance.
Communication is an important factor in determining patient outcomes, patient experiences, and healthcare costs, both positively and negatively. In fact, communication breakdown accounts for two thirds of sentinel events, the most serious of errors reported to the Joint Commission, making it the leading cause of medical errors (Starmer et al., 2014). The Institute of Medicine (1999) conservatively estimates that between 44,000 and 98,000 patients die each year from medical errors. More recent estimates predicted this number to be upwards of 400,000 deaths annually, making medical errors the third leading cause of death in the United States (Makary & Daniel, 2016). Miscommunication and handoff errors are the primary point these errors occur.
The Intensive Care Unit, or ICU, is an extremely busy place filled with high-intensity nursing staff and patients in critical condition. Brian Marvell, RN is the director for the St. Vincent Cardiovascular ICU, or CVICU, and the Surgical/Trauma ICU, or STICU. Brian’s role is to function as a team leader for the nursing staff on each of these units and to ensure patient safety and daily rounding is accounted for. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the experiences covered over the 34 hours spent shadowing Brian, as well as relate the experiences noted to course content and QSEN principles. The leadership style that Brian radiates is one of teamwork and collaboration as well as authoritative, when needed.
This resulted in 7% of the respondents reporting involvement in a medication error during that past year. Good interpersonal skills and effective communication ensures that concerns regarding patient safety can be brought up without seemingly challenging the knowledge of the other healthcare
Communication can be a big factor in medication errors. Miscommunication by the members of the healthcare team can lead to deadly consequences, so orders should be repeated back and verified (Anderson, 2010.) Sometimes
In order for humans to overcome increased demand for nutrients in an ICU setting it is important that nutrition be available readily. “Nutritional support is essential for critically ill patients in the intensive care unit. It provides energy, protein and other nutrients for patients who cannot be fed orally. According to the author, “Consideration in determining the type and amount of nutritional support depend on the patients underlying medical conditions, nutritional status and available route of nutrient delivery. ”(Kim, p. 2861)
The complexity of health care recently has increased the risk of error and accidental harm and medical trainees' knowledge about patient safety has been shown to be limited as mentioned in yanli et al. study (2011) (12).Improving patient safety has been on top of research agenda’s worldwide during the last two decades, The WHO Curriculum Guide was developed to fill the gap in patient safety education by providing a comprehensive curriculum designed to build foundation knowledge and skills for all health-care students that will better prepare them for clinical practice in a range of environments (1). This study was designed to prepare an outline of patient safety curriculum to be integrated vertically into the six medical years, implement
